ve girls, and himself;
the hideous reiteration of "your lordship" by the obsequious servants,
that reproduced in his mind the slow deep notes of the passing bell,
tolled in the village for his grandfather and cousin.

A letter from Julia Kaye had fluttered in like a dove of promise, but he
had never been able to recall anything in the six pages of graceful
sympathy but her allusions to the dead as "the marquess" and "the earl."
He told himself angrily that his brain must have weakened to notice a
solecism at such a time, but it is in moments of abnormal mental strain
that trifles have their innings; and during the beautiful service in the
chapel he caught himself wondering if any woman of his own class could
have made such a slip. Always deaf to gossip, he had no suspicion that
his Julia had been laughed at more than once for her inability to grasp
all the unwritten laws of a world which she had entered too late. With
an ear in which a title lingered like a full voluptuous note of music,
she was blunt to certain of the democratic canons of modern society.
Although it gave her the keenest pleasure to address the highest
bulwarks of the peerage off-handedly as "duke" and "duchess," there had
been moments of confusion when she had lapsed naturally into "your
grace." And it would have seemed like a lost opportunity to have alluded
to a titled foreigner without his "von" or "de," even where there was a
more positive title to use as often as she pleased. It was the one weak
spot in a singularly acute and accomplished mind.

But of all this Gwynne knew nothing, and he was dully wondering if a
great love could be affected by trifles, and if his brain and character
were of less immutable material than he had believed, his mental vision
still straying through the insupportable gloom of the past week, when he
heard a light foot-fall beyond the door. He sprang to his feet, cursing
his nerves, and was by no means reassured upon seeing the long figure of
a woman, dressed entirely in white, a candle in her hand, approaching
him down the dark corridor. He had never given a moment's thought in his
active life to psychic phenomena, but he was in a state of mind where
nothing would have surprised him, and he had turned cold to his
finger-tips when a familiar voice reassured him.

"I am not Lady Macbeth," said Isabel, with a tremor in her own voice, as
she entered and blew out the candle. "But I felt like her as I braved
the terrors of a